Pitts: Photo brings back memories of civil rights struggle

Thursday

Feb 28, 2013 at 12:01 AMFeb 28, 2013 at 7:29 AM

Myron B. Pitts

The two men in the black and white photograph look confident and relaxed as they lean on the cafeteria counter.

They are neatly dressed and look as if they belong there - as if they come there all the time. But a sign on the counter next to one of the men says that they are not welcome because they are not white.

Another sign, hanging between an opening in the counter where employees enter, carries a symbolic message: "Closed."

The late Charles Allen "Shane" McNeill is one of the men in the picture, and he and the other man are protesting at a segregated lunch counter, most likely in Charlotte.

Charles B. Evans of Elizabeth City (no relation to the Cumberland County commissioner) grew up across the street from McNeill in College Heights. He recently spotted the photo of his friend in an unlikely place: at the Museum of the Albemarle during the installation of the new Elizabeth City police chief.

The photo is part of an exhibit for Black History Month.

"My first reaction is that I was startled," Evans says. "I was taken aback. I said, 'Hey, that's Shane!' "

McNeill was a Fayetteville native and a graduate of E.E. Smith High School who attended Johnson C. Smith University in Charlotte. His family has long and lasting ties to the Murchison Road area; his brother, Dr. Ernest McNeill, is a professor at Fayetteville State University and a leader in special education.

Growning up, Evans called Charles McNeill by his nickname "Shane," which McNeill got from his love of the 1953 movie starring Alan Ladd. The two friends played football together and went to the same church.

McNeill, like many college students, joined the 1960s civil rights movement, which in North Carolina is symbolized by cafeteria sit-ins.

Memories of that time, and McNeill's activism, came flooding back when Evans saw the photo. Evans talked to a member of the staff about the picture and was even allowed back after hours to take a picture of it.

Evans says he considers McNeill one of the unsung heroes of the civil rights movement. He says his friend, who died in 2003 at age 64, paid dearly for his involvement in the lunch-counter sit-ins.

McNeill was one of 70 students from Johnson C. Smith protesting in the basement cafeteria of a Belk store in Charlotte, according to a news article from February 1960 posted at a website about the sit-in movement. The story reports that McNeill, then 21, was booked on an assault charge after a white woman from Monroe claimed he pushed her.

According to Evans, a police officer struck McNeill on the head after McNeill's dust-up with the woman, who spat at him.

The blow caused "severe physical and mental damage that lasted him a lifetime," Evans says.

He noted that other civil rights figures received due recognition, including "The Greensboro Four," who kicked off the sit-in movement with a protest at a Woolworth's lunch counter.

He believes that McNeill's legacy should be preserved in some way.

"I thought it proper and fitting to see if Fayetteville can do something on Charles."

Columnist Myron B. Pitts can be reached at pittsm@fayobserver.com or 910-486-3559.

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